I Married a Billionaire: The Prodigal Son (Contemporary Romance) (14 page)

“I’m not here to judge you,” I said. “I just want to tell Daniel’s story. And I want you two to figure out some way to make things work. I don’t know what that is, but if I can help in any way, I’m going to.”

“He’s too stubborn,” said Walter. “He’s never going to change. He thinks he knows best, and nothing’s going to change that.”

“He said some very similar things about you,” I pointed out. I was beginning to grit my teeth.

“And you’re taking his side,” said Walter, rolling his eyes a little. “Of course.

I couldn’t stand it anymore. “Did you come back to reconcile, or did you come back because you thought he couldn’t manage his life without you? Because he’s done just fine for himself, so far.” The anger was roiling inside my stomach. Somehow, the idea of Walter being so disrespectful towards Daniel made me even angrier than my parents doing the same thing to me.

I could tell I was starting to get through to him. “Daniel always thought he knew best. He’s been that way his whole life. He needs to learn how to accept someone else’s guidance.”

“Can’t imagine how he got like that,” I muttered, scribbling heavily on the page.

“I’m sorry, Madeline?” Walter was starting to raise his voice.

“You heard me,” I snapped back. I really hadn’t intended for things to go so far south, but I simply couldn’t keep my mouth shut.

Walter crossed his legs at the knee and considered for a moment before he spoke again. “I’m entitled,” he said, finally. “I’ve been alive for longer than both of you combined. I don’t care how Daniel presents himself to everybody else, I know who he really is. I taught him everything he knows. He’s not half as smart as he thinks.”

If I’d been using a pencil, I would have snapped it in half by now.

“I don’t understand what you’re trying to accomplish,” I managed to say, finally.

He shrugged. “I’m just trying to get you to see things from my perspective,” he said. “But I’m not surprised that you can’t.”

I slammed my notebook shut. “You’re treating him like he’s still a child!” I shouted.

He actually half-stood from his chair, his nostrils flaring. “I’m his father. He’s my
son
. I don’t need any better reason than that,” he snarled.

My jaw was clenched so hard it hurt.

“Sorry,” I said, as softly as I could manage. “That’s just not going to cut it anymore.”

He’d settled back down, and he was drumming his fingers on his thigh, just like Daniel. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he said, maddeningly calm again. “You don’t have children.”

“You’re right, I don’t.” I let out a long breath, and flipped to a fresh page in my notebook. “I apologize for getting so far off track. Let’s get back to business.”

“Yes, let’s.” His tone was withering.

I was trying to start writing something - I wasn’t sure what - but somehow I couldn’t quite wrap my brain around the motion of moving my hand across the page. It seemed impossible. I couldn’t remember how to start. I felt shaky and cold. My pulse seemed to be thrumming too weak - too fast. I stood, abruptly, and only had an instant to realize what a mistake that was before black spots started swimming in front of my eyes. I swayed, feeling as if my head were starting to float away from my body.

“Madeline. Madeline.” I heard Walter’s voice, sounding very distant and strange like he was talking on an old-fashioned telephone. The last thing I felt before my vision went black was his hand closing around my wrist.

***

“Why am I on the floor?” My lips felt dry and sluggish. I tried to raise myself up on my elbows, but a gentle touch on my shoulder stilled me.

“Madeline, you fainted. It’s all right. You’re going to be fine.”

I stirred. My limbs felt very heavy. I managed to lift my head a little, and I saw that he’d slid a pillow under my ankles. Feet above the head; someone remembered their first aid training. I wanted to laugh, for some reason, but it came out as a dry cough.

“Here,” said Walter, pushing the pillow out of the way and sliding his arm under my back. “Try and sit up, if you can. Slowly.”

He guided me to sit up so that I was leaning against the wall.

“When was the last time you ate?” he wanted to know.

I looked up at him. He’d turned completely businesslike, but not brusque. There was compassion there. I wasn’t sure why that surprised me.

“I, uh…” I swallowed dryly. He was getting a bottle of water from the fridge. “I haven’t.”

He came back, untwisting the cap on the bottle of water and handing it to me. There was a box of saltines tucked under his arm, and when I was done drinking, he tore open a sleeve, pulled out a cracker, and handed it to me.

“You were out for less than a minute,” he said. “I can take you to the hospital anyway, if you want. It might be a good idea. Considering.”

“Considering what?” I said, around a mouthful of cracker crumbs.

He gave me a withering look that I’d seen on Lindsey’s face, more than once. “Madeline, give me some credit. There’s no point in trying to hide it.”

I took another drink from the bottle to wash down some of the saltines. “We were just going to wait a little longer,” I said.

“Yeah, well.” He was crouching there beside me, and he didn’t seem too uncomfortable with the position, which I thought was pretty admirable for a man his age. I was struck again by how different his speech patterns were from Daniel’s, while still being - in some vague, indefinable way - incredibly similar. It was like Daniel had done everything he possibly could to try and separate himself from his past. Speaking with measured precision, showing off his impressive vocabulary whenever he had the opportunity. Being formal when informal would have sufficed. But still, even with all that, he couldn’t quite shake off his father’s influence. “Want me to call Danny?”

“No,” I said. “He’s in a big meeting. Can’t be disturbed. Emergencies only.”

“I think this might qualify,” he said, his eyes crinkling at the corners.

“I doubt it,” I said. “I’m fine now.”

Walter smiled. “Thatta girl.” But his tone wasn’t nearly as condescending as I would have expected.

“Thanks,” I said, after a moment.

Walter sat down, slowly. “For what?”

“I don’t know.” I pulled out another cracker and contemplated it. “Not…letting me crack my head on something, I guess.”

“Well, you’re very welcome.”

I swallowed, and cleared my throat.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For?” Walter raised his eyebrows a little.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you.” I did feel kind of bad about it, in retrospect. Not that he didn’t deserve it, but I still should have been able to control myself better.

I half expected him to make some joke about pregnancy hormones, or otherwise write it off. Write
me
off. But instead, he just looked thoughtful for a moment.

“I know I can be unpleasant sometimes,” he said, with a bluntness that, in retrospect, shouldn’t have surprised me. “It’s just…I guess it’s just a habit, at this point. Some people bite their nails. I’m an asshole. We all have our, you know, our hobbies.”

“Have you ever considered just…not being one?” I set the bottle of water down on the floor beside me. “It’s not too hard.”

“It’s surprisingly hard when you’re not used to being any other way,” he said, standing up and coming over to extend his arm to me. “Hospital?”

“I guess,” I said. I wasn’t too keen on the idea, but he was probably right. I should get checked out, just in case.

“Think you can walk?”

“Most likely.”

He escorted me out to his car, a heavily used station wagon that smelled faintly of old cigarettes. I kept the window rolled down for the drive. We went to the non-emergency door and the check-in didn’t take as long as I’d feared.

“This your father?” one of the orderlies asked, nodding towards Walter.

“In law,” I said, realizing this was the first time I’d ever acknowledged his existence to anyone outside of the family. If any paparazzi happened to be lurking around the corner in the chapel, this story was going to blow up.

Or maybe not. Thinking back on it, I wasn’t confident that Daniel ever discussed his parents in interviews. It might just as easily have been one of those topics he carefully avoided, like the lawsuit all those years ago when he’d still been in college, and one of his “buddies” accused him of stealing a prototype design that eventually became Plum’s first bestselling phone.

“Everything looks fine, as far as I can tell,” the doctor said, after they’d finished poking and prodding at me for a while. “It’s actually not that uncommon to lose consciousness when you’re pregnant, even during the first trimester. It’s a combination of blood sugar and rapid blood pressure changes that go along with your veins expanding. If you went without eating for a while and then stood up suddenly after sitting still for a long time, that sounds like a perfect storm. I wouldn’t look for any more complicated explanations than that.”

I nodded. Walter, in the chair besides me, was nodding too.

“Just make sure you eat something every few hours, even if it’s just something small, and keep yourself hydrated too. And whenever you stand up, try to do it slowly and gradually to give your body time to adjust.” The doctor snapped his chart shut. “I’ll tell the nurse to get your discharge papers ready.”

“This is humiliating,” I muttered, after the door shut behind him. “Not even twelve weeks pregnant and I’m already turning into an invalid.”

“Oh, it’s not all that bad,” said Walter. “Laura had preeclampsia the second time around. She was on bed rest for two straight months.”

“Oh, God,” I groaned, leaning my head back on the pillow. “Is it too early to put me in twilight sleep?”

I realized, belatedly, that Laura must be Daniel’s mother. Her name had never come up.

“About thirty years too late, I think.” Walter was smiling. “And quite a few months too early for one of those spinal doohickeys. Actually, you know, when Lindsey was born, we had to look around for a hospital that would promise us a natural birth. It wasn’t quite out of practice yet, to completely knock ‘em out so they had no memory of even having a kid. Laura had a friend who went through it. She declined the shot, but they gave it to her anyway. I guess when they do it, they strap them down to the bed. She had bruises on her arms and legs when she came to, and the whole story terrified Laura. She wouldn’t agree to give birth in any hospital until she’d conducted extensive interviews with practically the whole staff.”

“God damn,” I said. I reached for my phone. “I wonder if Daniel’s out of his meeting yet. I guarantee he’s going to be offended that I didn’t call him, even though everything’s fine.”

“I’ll let you get changed,” said Walter, standing up and heading for the door. “Meet me in the lobby.”

By the time he’d driven me home and helped me settle on the sofa, insisting on staying until Daniel got home, I realized I’d gotten to know Walter surprisingly well in these last few hours. As he washed the glasses in the sink, I contemplated what a strange turn the day’s events had taken.

“You need some real food,” he came out and announced at one point, drying his hands on a dishtowel. “What sounds good?”

I shrugged. I still didn’t really feel hungry, but the doctor had told me to make sure and eat. Then, I remembered something.

“There’s leftover alfredo in the fridge,” I said. “I could probably have that.”

“Sure,” said Walter, heading over to dig it out. “I’ll make sure to heat it up real good. Don’t want to be responsible for you getting some weird pregnancy sickness.”

I found myself smiling.

Eleven

Daniel stopped dead in his tracks after opening the front door.

“Dad?” he said, looking at Walter with utter confusion.

“Hope your meeting went well,” Walter said, coming over to shake his hand. Daniel did, reluctantly. “It’s nice to see you again.”

“I just…I assumed you’d be gone before I got home,” Daniel replied, tightly. He dropped his briefcase on the floor.

“I was planning on it,” said Walter. “But then your wife took a little spill. She’s fine, don’t worry, the baby’s fine. Guess she didn’t eat breakfast this morning and her blood sugar, or her blood pressure, or both - took a big dip. We already went to the hospital. Three thousand dollar bill to hear ‘make sure to eat some food occasionally.” He smiled. “But that’s your problem, not mine.”

It took a moment for all of this to sink in. “Maddy,” said Daniel sharply, coming over to me. I was reclining on the sofa. “Why the hell didn’t you call?”

“Because I was fine,” I insisted, as he knelt beside me. “It was just stupid of me not to eat breakfast.”

“Jesus Christ.” Daniel’s eyes darted all over my body, as if he were looking for some source of the problem. “Are you sure that’s all it is? Did they run tests?”

“Did you hear what I said?” Walter cut in. “
Three thousand dollars
. That wasn’t just for the paper gown, I’m pretty sure.”

“Thank you,” Daniel snapped. “Would you mind if I had a conversation with my wife for a minute?”

“Sure, sure.” Walter picked up his jacket. “It’s time for me to get out of here anyway.”

“Thank you, Walter,” I called after him as he left, but the only answer I got was the sound of the door slamming.

“You could have been a little more considerate,” I said, propping myself up on my elbows. “He drove me to the hospital, and then stayed with me all day.”

“What, you mean he fulfilled the basic requirements for being a decent human being?” Daniel slumped down on the floor before I had a chance to move my feet. “I’ll be sure to send him a fruit basket.”

“He was very nice,” I said. “Eventually.”

Daniel craned his neck to look at me. “And what does that mean? Eventually?”

“Well, things got a little heated when I was trying to interview him. But once I passed out…”

“Wait, wait, wait.” Daniel twisted his whole body around. “You were fighting with him just beforehand?”

“Well, not just. We’d kind of…we were trying to switch gears and get back to business.”

“But you were agitated,” Daniel insisted. “He upset you.”

“I…yes, I guess so.”